We drank a quart of smuggled wine the day
we ditched the opera. Fuck that noise! we cried,
a toast to sucker-classmates trapped inside
some fieldtrip (“gifted” only) matinee.
Another time you plucked me from my bike
a tick before the schoolbus crushed its frame.
You’ve paid death back this time, I guess. “His name —
I’m sure it was, but Michael... not just Mike,”
my mother said. “They thought at first he’d live.
A truck...” I had to put my kids to bed.
Now, linked to news, I pour some hometown red.
Your death’s online. I wonder what you’d give —
my glass raised to the diva of way-back-when —
to hear her now, or to have heard her then.
Simon Hunt was born in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) and grew up in England and the United States. He teaches English in Monterey, California, where he lives with his wife and two children. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Troubadour, The Edge City Review, Court Green, The Sewanee Review, The Raintown Review, and 14 by 14, among others.
We drank a quart of smuggled wine the day